The Price We Pay
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
~James Baldwin
"Naomi Misora, Naomi Misora," Beyond mumbled as he stared into the mirror. God, how he hated seeing L's face looking back at him. Or - a carefully estimated approximation of L's face. It was possible that his old friend had changed, however slightly, over the past three years - and he never could get the hair quite right. Anyway…
"She called me a freak, A," B said suddenly, addressing the empty air around him. He supposed that it wasn't the healthiest habit - talking to your dead friend - but since any qualified psychologist would probably declare him insane if given the chance, he figured that it wasn't particularly abnormal. "The plan is working perfectly," he continued gloomily as he picked up a tube of make-up, glared at it sulkily, and then hurled it at the wall, "perfectly."
He slumped moodily down in his folding chair and allowed himself to wallow in self-pity. It was just his cursed luck that when he'd finally run into a woman who actually caused him look at her twice - the first woman who'd made him consider the whole sticky business of personal relationships since he left the House - he'd committed himself, body and soul, to following through a plan which involved acting like a total and complete freak in front of her.
The only topside to the whole business was that Misora had reported her impression of his mimicry to L; Beyond was forced to grin as he recalled the side of the conversation which he had heard. How he would have loved to see the look on L's face.
B's momentary amusement vanished as he turned his thoughts back to his dilemma. He tapped his fingers restlessly on the chair arm as his thoughts chased each other around and around his head until at last he stood up violently, sending the flimsy chair over with a crash. "Why the hell did L have to pick a woman, anyway?" he burst out furiously. Beyond's temper was not helped by the knowledge that he was being completely irrational, and he began tensely pacing from side to side of his little room. He needed to pull himself together!
"She is the perfect choice for the job," he told himself, pausing his restless motion to lean against the wall. "It's been - easy - to lead her along this far - a walk in the park compared to what I was preparing for. The personal element does not have to enter into this at all."
Of course it doesn't, mocked a voice in the back of his mind. B glanced at the mirror again and caught a glimpse of L's face. This whole damned plan is about the personal element! About proving that you're better than he is. Smashing his perfect façade and rubbing his face in the fact that you finally beat him. This is revenge for A - why else did you pick the location so carefully, use those particular dolls?
B slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor and put his head between his knees. It had to be a bad sign when the voices in his head actually started winning the arguments. He tugged viciously at a lock of his dyed-black hair, letting out a moan of frustration. "She's beautiful, A," he whispered miserably. "And annoying, and insufferable, and fascinating - she's so easy to read, and yet she still surprises me. And she's utterly disgusted by me - as she's supposed to be. Thinks I'd be doing the world a favor if I died. Huh, guess she's in luck." He clenched his hands. "I can't move out of character too much - if I let anything slip, it could be a disaster. Anyway, what's the point? 'Well, Misora, I think you're beautiful, I'd like to ask you out to dinner, but I think it only fair to warn you that I'll be dead before the week is out?' That has to be the worst pickup line I've ever heard."
Beyond took a deep breath and let it out, counting to ten in seven languages before he raised his head and firmly made himself face the facts. Having an emotional breakdown right now wouldn't solve anything, and it was not a good sign that he was so rattled just a short time before he'd have to go through with a cold-blooded minutely planned suicide. There could be no room for mistakes now, no room for tripping up - everything had to go according to plan. And that plan did not include Naomi Misora, dead or alive, as anything more than a tool to be used.
That plan was what he'd lived for the last few years, the plan was what kept him going - nothing else mattered now. Not himself, not Misora, and not the fact that he could see his last chance for happiness slipping through his fingers. The plan was to utterly destroy L, L, whom he hated, whom he tried to pretend that he had always hated - on whose shoulders rested not only A's death and B's banishment, but every betrayal before and since then. This was all he lived for - to see L go down. That was all that mattered. Nothing else.
And having decided this, coldly and calculatingly, Beyond Birthday, criminal, outcast, and cold-blooded killer, put his head down on his knees again and burst into bitter, dry, racking sobs, which gripped him and shook him and wrung him out until there was nothing left but a cold sense of purpose.